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Last night I went up to New People SF to see the two 120 minute Madoka movies. I don’t think they need a review here – I’ll say it was worth spending 5 hours of travel time for, but hopefully next time I won’t have to take public transit – but without spoiling the series, there were some interesting things about the movie adaptation.

First off, the theater turned out to be pretty small, with almost two rows just being people I knew from Twitter, there was none of the special merchandise, and our tickets were printed on receipt paper. This leads me to suspect that Los Angeles is the only US city Japan believes actually exists.

I don’t exactly remember the TV series scene-by-scene anymore, but as far as I noticed there weren’t many new scenes; new animation instead went into improving the witch fights and transformation scenes, animation fixes, and added OP/ED sequences that really seemed sort of out of place in a movie.

The few new scenes mostly seemed intended to make Homura even more of a main character1. Mami actually lost character development, along with all the adults – her wish isn’t shown and they spent almost all their onscreen time talking about romance. In exchange, Mami’s new theme is really good.

All of the cast rerecorded their parts for the movies, and this time actually knew what the story was ahead of time. I’m not sure it made much of a difference, but Kyouko and QB’s performances stood out as very good. (Kyouko’s the best anyway.)

My only complaint about the translation is that one of the seiyuu used the word sekaikan in the opening comment, and I doubt anyone understood what she meant from the subtitle translating it as “worldview.”

In the end I still think Madoka’s plot is very strong when seen all at once, but Kyouko does suffer a little too much and Madoka really doesn’t have a reason to keep following people around at night. Still, if you haven’t seen it yet you should all go and do it before it’s ruined by sequels!

Discussion questions:

Why does Kyousuke have to stay in bed if he has a wheelchair?

Why don’t Madoka’s parents notice she’s never home at night?

How do magical girls afford apartments?

Are the flights of doves and their teacher’s voice Hidamari Sketch jokes?

This image is suddenly more significant with the new relevations about Homura’s magical pocket. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too much for me to translate at the moment, but I assure you it’s very convincing.

Note: I frequently encounter people complaining that cheap moe/fanservice anime are being made because they sell better than “serious” anime. However, these shows typically sell extremely poorly – I hope this list will help improve your internet arguments. I’ve added a somewhat-accurate list of genres/original source material.

JAniCA has just posted a press release announcing the four companies out of the sixteen that applied who will be given 38 million yen each in order to create a 23-minute original animation primarily utilizing young animators as detailed in my earlier post on this project.

More 2ch copypaste since I’m bored and can’t turn on my lights to read manga since that’ll attract bugs. This is probably already reproduced somewhere on animesuki, but oh well. “Source is 2ch”, though I bet if you checked on the Oricon site or went to the diet library and took a look at Oricon Biz that you’d find numbers that agree with this! “Discs sold” is the number of discs listed as sold for the highest-selling single volume released of a given series.

But first, some pie charts:

from a Kadokawa booth at some convention or event or another.
Red = (light) novels
Green = manga
Purple = original
Blue = game
Yellow = other

…in condensed bullet point form of because there’s no way i’m completely translating a 39 page technical PDF just for fun, even if the project is really interesting.

Anyway, this project was announced earlier this month and the initial announcement about the basic form of the project (4 23-minute original animations to be produced with a 38 million yen budget each, with production focusing on the training of young animators) was picked up by the usualsuspects. However, the general reaction on the comments sections seemed to be on the negative side, which was a little baffling to me. I have a lot of trust and respect for JAniCA, as they’ve been one of the most staunch supporters of animators (see translations here, here, and just about every substantial report over the last few years about animator salaries) and so the endless comments of “what is government doing???? just give money to the animators!!” were a little disheartening. These complaints seemed especially silly since the government funding is only coming in at around $2 million US, which in my admittedly rather business-ignorant mind isn’t going to do a whole lot if they just threw it towards wages. (Though if they took the proposed $130 million LDP budget for the manga library and gave that cash to animators, then maybe it’d be a different story…)

Anyway, I got to looking at the detailed application sheet that JAniCA put out a few days later, and wouldn’t you know it, it looks like a very well-meaning, intelligently drafted, and fast-acting plan! Anyway, here are your bullet points, as promised earlier. I’m doing this on a bit more of a rush than normal for me, so goyaku gomen. Please leave comments if you have any corrections/questions.

I guess I’ve watched more than 3 episodes of some of these, but I have no idea what a schedule is and forgot to write this. Oh well…

Working!!
A 4koma anime that feels like a 4koma anime, produced by A-1 Pictures channeling J.C. Staff. It has some nice character ideas, but the execution is a bit too straightforward, so it’s a little boring – still watchable, but I don’t love it. I wish it was by SHAFT somehow, even though I was very bored with Arakawa (dropped at 2 episodes).
The opening doesn’t really know what it’s doing – half of it is new and interesting, and half of it seems to be shots copied from Azumanga Daioh. My notes say “ed is stupid”, but I can’t remember anything about it, so let’s leave it at that.
I hear the later episodes are more solid and that there’s a new character with hime cut. Watching.

Giant Killing
A soccer anime by Studio DEEN with actual money. I thought it was really interesting that a DEEN show with a budget has better drawings and movement, but still has horrible washed-out coloring choices for everything. Actually, I thought that was more interesting than the show – I’ve never seen a sports anime before, so it’s kind of cool, but the early part is just the coach making up magic quirky strategies for everything instead of something more realistic.
I’ll have to look ahead and see if it goes anywhere, otherwise dropped at 3 episodes.

Sarai-ya Goyou / House of Five Leaves
A samurai show made by manglobe that’s REALLY BORING!
Nothing has happened in 3 episodes except for one swordfight, so it doesn’t matter how good the art is (it’s good). Dropped.

Senkou no Night Raid
Psychic superpower action series by A-1 Pictures channeling Bones. I’m watching this untranslated, and the fake Chinese politics sort of goes over my head, so without that it’s just a watchable but slow action drama – a lot of things happen, but not in a really interesting way. I’d rather finish Darker than Black, really. I’ve heard some other people say it was “awful”, but I can’t really tell what’s annoying them. Watching halfheartedly.

The OP is a really complicated animation that looks cool and doesn’t match the actual show at all.

They make it sound like the psychics are an important national secret, but then in episode 3 they’re teleporting bombs out of buildings all over the place. Won’t someone notice?

Now that I think about it, the only things I’ve seen in the last few weeks were Angel Beats! and K-ON!!. More about that later.